Five for Friday

Five "firsts" for me this week...

1. My kids have been participating in the Morden Festival of the Arts since Austin was in kindergarten. They've participated in Speech Arts and Piano. This week, Sage & Jonah presented two poems each, one in French and one in English. They both did really well, earning an A+ on each one.

On Monday evening, I received a phone call from one of the festival organizers, who asked me if I would be interested in adjudicating for the Speech Arts on Tuesday afternoon & evening. I was quite surprised, as I've never done it before. But they were in a bind & I thought I could help them out, so I said yes.

I was nervous, but my chairperson was amazing and very encouraging. And I had a lot of fun! The organizer suggested that I attend a workshop and get on the list of adjudicators, so I can do it at festivals around the province. A very cool idea, for sure!

(Oh, and another first for me for Festival will take place Sunday evening, when I participate in the festival-- I'm playing a duet with Sage on the piano! Wish me luck!)

2. The kids and I are participating in our annual Premier Taekwondo Championships tomorrow.  Jonah is participating in patterns. Austin & I are participating in patterns & board breaking. Sage is participating in patterns & sparring. And I will be also be a ring manager for the patterns and for the sparring competitions, something I've never done before. I'm a little nervous, but am hoping I'll do a good job.

3. In preparation for tomorrow's tournament, I practised board breaking last night in tkd class. I broke three boards, one of them with a jump back kick, which is something I've never done before.

4. I've been sugar-free & deep-fried-foods-free for over 100 days now.... 103, to be precise. ;) I weighed myself this morning and I have lost 11 lbs so far. AND, this week, for the first time, someone asked me if I've lost weight! Yes! It's nice that it's starting to be noticeable...

5. I made a layout and a card using Sketch #6 of Kelly Purkey's Sketchbook 4, this afternoon. Here's the layout, where I used five of the same photo on a layout (a first for me!)...

I used Bazzil cardstock (12x12), PTI cardstock (rustic cream) & dies (pinking border, block alphabet), Echo Park (yellow) & Studio Calico (orange, blue) patterned paper and SU! cardstock (island indigo).

Here's a close up of the journaling:

And here's the card I made (it's for Jonah for tomorrow to encourage him for the tournament) using the same patterned paper and cardstock (even though the island indigo looks darker here, it's not in real life.)

I also use PTI stamps (boy basic: game on) & dies (star border).

Any firsts for you this week?

Thanks for looking!